Blaze News original: The surprising companies accused of helping sexual exploitation — and how to protect your children online

You might be surprised to learn which digital entities are accused of facilitating, enabling, and even profiting from sexual abuse and exploitation online.

Last month, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation released its annual “Dirty Dozen” list, a campaign bringing attention to entities and companies it believes are complicit in sexual exploitation.

This year’s list includes the following entities and the NCOSE's reasoning for including them:

• Apple: "This Big Tech titan refuses to scan for child sex abuse material, hosts dangerous apps with deceptive age ratings and descriptions, and won’t default safety features for teens."
• Cash App: "This peer-to-peer payment app appeals to pimps, predators, and pedophiles looking for a covert way to conduct criminal activity."
• Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act: "The Greatest Enabler of Online Sexual Exploitation. Misinterpretations of Communications Decency Act Section 230 grant Big Tech blanket immunity for any and all types of abuses they facilitate."
• Cloudflare: "Providing a platform for sex buyers and traffickers. Cloudflare says it wants to build a better internet. So why does it provide services to some of the most prolific prostitution forums and deepfake sites?"
• Discord: "This platform is popular with predators seeking to groom kids and with creeps looking to create, trade, or find sexually abusive content of children and unsuspecting adults."
• LinkedIn: "LinkedIn legitimizes Pornhub and other exploitative enterprises by giving them a platform, overlooks deepfake tool promotion, and is rampant with sexual harassment against women."
• Meta: "Meta’s launch of end-to-end encryption, open-sourced AI, and virtual reality are unleashing new worlds of exploitation."
• Github: "The vast majority of deepfakes, 'nudify' apps, and AI-generated child sex abuse content originate on this platform owned by the world’s richest company."
• Reddit: "Child sex abuse material, sex trafficking, and image-based sexual abuse hide in plain sight among endless pornography subreddits allowed on this platform."
• Roblox: "Roblox treats child protection like a game. Among the avatars, blocks, and buildings, kids are exposed to predators, rape-themed games, and age-inappropriate content like sex parties."
• Spotify: "Sexually explicit images, sadistic content, and networks trading child sex abuse material on its platform prove Spotify is out of tune with basic child safety measures and moderation practices."
• Telegram: "Messaging app Telegram serves as a safe haven for criminal communities across the globe. Sexual torture rings, sextortion gangs, deepfake bots, and more all thrive on an alarming scale."

What is immediately obvious about the list is that children and teenagers use these applications and programs every day.

Children are, therefore, being exposed to the dangers of sexual exploitation through these entities, according to the NCOSE, an alarming phenomenon that validates the thesis of psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s newest book, “The Anxious Generation.”

His central idea goes like this: “We have overprotected children in the real world and underprotected them in the virtual world.”

That our children face an onslaught of digital dangers in an increasingly technological world raises an important question: How can parents protect their children in our digital world?

If you asked Haidt for his prescription to the problem, he would counsel you not to buy your children a smartphone until they begin high school. And social media? Don’t let them use it before age 16 — at the earliest.

Others believe the dangers that screens and social media pose are too great for any child because, after all, a person's brain won't complete its development until one's mid-20s.

But experts who spoke with Blaze News made it clear: This is not an issue parents can ignore because the well-being of your family and the lives of your children are at stake.

"We have a distorted view of the creepy guy in the van picking up our kids on the way to the playground or the fear of a child climbing too high on the tree," Lina Nealon, vice president and director of corporate advocacy at NCOSE, told Blaze News.

"But then we give them this very dangerous device with very little oversight or even understanding of the dangers that are literally in the palm of their hands," she warned.

Blaze News reached out to each of the companies listed above. None provided a response to NCOSE's allegations.

The problem is vast

Mental health challenges like anxiety, depression, bullying, suicidal ideations, addictions, and exploitation — those are just some of the problems with the digital world.

But the unique challenge with the digital world is that social media and digital technologies are designed to hook users by hijacking their brain chemistry to keep them scrolling without understanding the consequences of such behavior.

"They are dangerous by their very design because their profit is made by facilitating those connections and making people stay online," Nealon said.

This online world is not only dangerous for you, according to Nealon, but your children are particularly vulnerable.

"First of all, there are very little limitations and protections for children online from being accessed by adults in general — adult strangers and certainly predatory adults," she explained.

"Teenagers, they are built to seek connection and meet. They want to meet new people. They want to know where they fit into the world. And so these companies — Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok — create this environment where it is very easy," she said. "It's not only easy for predators to access kids, but they're creating the very environment that makes kids more susceptible to sexual abuse and exploitation."

Through connection, likes, and shares, social media companies tap into the vulnerabilities of children, Nealon explained — and make them even more vulnerable.

"These platforms are actually reducing the self-esteem and self-worth of these children, and then they are allowing predators and adults to access them to see what they're doing, to see those vulnerabilities, to actually interact with them," she said. "So, from that perspective, it's very dangerous."

What is most alarming, Nealon told Blaze News, is that social media and digital companies do not have an incentive to protect your children.

"It's their very business model to put these kids at risk," she said. "I would say that they themselves are predators in a sense because they are preying on our children and their vulnerabilities for profit."

How to protect your family

Thankfully, all is not lost.

You can protect your family and children from the harms of the digital world — but it requires intentionality and sacrifice.

1. Educate yourself and your children

Melanie Hempe, founder of ScreenStrong, said the most important step to protect your family from the dangers of the digital world is to educate yourself and your family.

"Get educated and understand how kids are different from adults," Hempe told Blaze News. "The way an adult uses a screen is very different from the way a child uses a screen. We tend to think our kids are just little adults — and that's not true. They don't have impulse control. They're high-risk takers, and they're going to be searching for novelty even more than we are."

The sheer power of digital technology is exactly why parents need to be educated, Hempe explained, so that they "know how to harness the power."

"I'm telling you: You pay now or you pay later, but someone will pay. And most of the time, our kids are the ones paying," she warned.

Nealon delivered a similar warning.

"Be educated and keep up with the trends and what's happening," she said. "There's so much research out there ... and I think the less digital, the healthier your kids will be."

2. Cultivate a community of shared values

Engaging in conversations with other adults where your children are — such as school, church, and friends' houses — is critical to protect them from the harms of the digital world.

"Having conversations with adults where your children are going to be — at school, at church, in activities and youth groups — we are constantly shocked at how even leadership, people who are supposed to be caring for children, don't understand even some of the basic risks of the technology they may be using and actually encouraging kids to use," Nealon told Blaze News.

"It's critical to have those conversations when your child is going elsewhere because you can have all of the safety features at home. You can have the conversations, you can be very vigilant," she explained. "But, of course, they're out there in the world, and you hope that your children will make the right decisions — but they're also children."

"So, we need to make sure that the other adults that we put in their care are also paying attention and know and can also be sure that they're doing what they can to minimize the risks to the kids," she said.

Hempe agreed that cultivating community is necessary when seeking the proper relationship with screens and the digital world.

"It's hard to be alone and doing this on your own, especially when you have kids — they want to play with other kids who are not on Fortnite all day," she said. "You want your kids to be around other kids who have the same values and that are shooting for the high bar like you are."

3. Internet filters

If you choose to let your children use digital technology, consider installing software on devices that filter what they will be able to see and access.

"Make use of technology that's out there to protect your kids online," Nealon advised.

Companies like Bark, Canopy, and Covenant Eyes have built solutions for parents looking for filtering software. The benefit of these technologies is that you can limit what your children can access (i.e., harmful content) while still allowing them to use the internet.

4. Be a coach

When it comes to technology and your family, Hempe said parents need to be a coach.

"They need us to be like a coach," she said.

"My daughter was in gymnastics for years, and I learned so much about coaching," she explained. "I learned the coach has to be present when a child is doing something that's kind of dangerous. The coach has to be there. The coach can't be in the other room. And she learned that, 'Hey, I need my coach right here to spot me.' That's how it is with screens: We have to be there to spot our kids."

Hempe said it's not about being "controlling" or "legalistic." But she warned that giving children unfettered access to technology not only exposes them to the harms of the digital world — like screen addictions and sexual exploitation — but it's like letting your children drive a Mack truck on the interstate.

"They're not going to be safe on the highway when they're 10 years old driving the Mack truck," she explained.

Tools, not toys

The truth is that technology is not going anywhere. In less than 20 years' time, we've gone from the iPhone to AI, and Gen Z cannot fathom a life without social media or the digital world.

It is up to parents, then, to take serious the relationship their family will have to technology. Exploitation, digital addictions, and attachment dysfunctions are just some of the ramifications that parents are now facing because of technology, screens, and social media.

When discerning how to move forward with technology, remember this one principle from Hempe: Screens are a "tool — not a toy."

If you can remember that, Hempe promised you will figure out how to raise children in a digital world, all while protecting your family from the built-in harms of the technology.

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